3.7 Alternative Ways of Drawing relationship types
The method we have adopted for drawing entity-relationship diagrams is based on the methodology known as Information Engineering and implemented in the CASE tool IEW (Information Engineering Workbench). Avison & Fitzgerald (1988) give more detail on the history of the Information Engineering approach. ORACLE*CASE, which is an advanced integrated CASE tool used with the ORACLE DBMS, and SSADM, the widely-propogated systems analysis method use a different convention and that is discussed first. Following that, Chen diagrams are described. Both are compared and contrasted with our adopted method.